NASA’s newest space telescope has blasted off on a quest to find planets around other stars and explore the hidden universe. SpaceX launched the $4 billion Roman Space Telescope on Sunday from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. Roman blazed toward an observation point 1 million miles away that’s home to the Webb Space Telescope, one of NASA’s other crown jewels in the sky. Roman will take three months to reach its destination. Once there, it will survey the cosmos like never before. The telescope is named after the late Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first chief astronomer.

NASA launches a new space telescope named for astronomer Nancy Grace Roman to explore the hidden universe.

China has postponed its planned ambitious Chang’e-7 lunar mission. The mission was set to search for water ice on the moon. The spacecraft was scheduled to lift off in the coming days from the Wenchang Space Launch Site on China's southern Hainan island. In a brief statement, the China Manned Space Agency says the mission does not meet the launch conditions and cannot take place during the planned window this year. Preparations had been underway at the launch site for weeks. The Chang’e moon exploration program is named after a Chinese moon goddess and this is the seventh in the program.

Eclipses may be wondrous, but nothing beats seeing the northern and southern lights from space. That's the word from a pair of NASA astronauts living aboard the International Space Station for the past six months. Astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway told The Associated Press from orbit on Wednesday that the space station's position prevented them from seeing totality during last week's solar eclipse, but they still enjoyed a partial eclipse. They'll try to catch next week's lunar eclipse, too. Meir says the best cosmic shows are auroras. The two will return to Earth once their replacements arrive next month.

A telescope has spotted the fastest known star in the Milky Way. It's zipping around the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. Scientists say it harnesses the power of the black hole's gravity to fly faster without falling in. There are several hundred stars that closely orbit this black hole and are sensitive to its pull, but the newfound star also feels the effects of the black hole's rotation. Studying how it moves could help clue scientists into the black hole's mysterious properties, including its spin rate. The findings were published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

A NASA spacecraft circling the moon is providing the sharpest views yet of the crater carved by a crashing SpaceX rocket. The space agency on Tuesday released before-and-after photos of the impact area. The Falcon rocket's upper stage plowed into the moon two weeks ago after drifting through space for more than a year. It launched a pair of private moon landers in 2025 as part of NASA's push to commercialize lunar exploration. Scientists say based on these new photos, the fresh crater appears to be 60 feet across and less than 10 feet deep.

Astronomers say viewing conditions are promising for the Perseid meteor shower this year. A new moon will prevent moonlight from spoiling the show. NASA says about 50 to 100 meteors per hour may be visible under ideal conditions during Wednesday night's peak. The Perseids will coincide with a total solar eclipse across Spain, Iceland and Greenland and a six-planet parade. The best time to view the fireballs will come after totality. Meteor showers happen when Earth plows through trails of debris left by comets or asteroids. The Perseids come from comet Swift-Tuttle. The next major meteor shower peaks in October.